Monday, February 4, 2013

Challenges for the 21st Century Class

When I was a kid I went to school to learn from my teachers. I sat every morning in my chair, and listen to my teacher, an inexhaustible source of knowledge that tried to fill our brains helped by a text book, a blackboard and, in special occasions, some videos. I am getting ready now to become a teacher and this is not the teacher I can be, this is not the teacher I want to be.

It is scary to think how in the last 20 years the world has changed. Connections worldwide have become common thanks to the internet and so, everyone can share their knowledge and their ideas and have access to everyone's knowledge and ideas. Consequently, what is the point to spend hours filling our students' brains with theories that will not be valid anymore at the end of the class? If we as teachers do not give knowledge to our students, then what is our role in the 21st classroom?

In a world where knowledge evolves at dizzying speeds, citizens have to be able to select the good information from the correct sources. They need to differentiate between good information and propaganda in order to build their own knowledge and ideas.

Citizen need to learn how to organize the information found and how to share their thoughts in a proper, accurate and responsible way, linking their ideas to others' in order to gain credibility or  improving them by collaboration.

Technologies evolve as fast that our students will work in positions that do not even exist yet. Many of which will be created for them or, even better, by them.

Therefore, we can not teach as my teachers did in 20th century. The 21st century teacher has to:

  • Enhance creativity in their students, so they will be ready to innovate in a changing society.
  • Help their students to develop their adaptation ability, because the technologies they are using to learn, will be different to the one they will use to work in the future. 
  • Guide their students to develop their critical thinking, as they will be responsible to select the information, and the sources from an increasingly ocean of ideas, theories, and statements. 
  • Teach their students to connect their ideas to others' by building networks to take advantage of new learning opportunities.
To have an idea of how society has changed and what is the reality we are facing, I recommend you to watch the following videos:
In the bar on the right of this page you will find some interesting links to other blogs about education. Many of them can give us some ideas on how developing these skills in our students, others will focus on the content of language learning, but all of them give as clues and ideas to use technologies in the classroom. I hope you enjoy them. 



2 comments:

  1. I think the rules you said about 21 century teacher is really reasonable. I also want to be a teacher like that,but It is not so easy since we have to explore new ways by ourselves and learn the newest teaching methodology. Hope that you will be a successful 21 century teacher!

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  2. I especially liked your point that, "In a world where knowledge evolves at dizzying speeds, citizens have to be able to select the good information from the correct sources." Helping students learn to distinguish between accuracy and deception or bias on the Internet is now one of our new roles as teachers.

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